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Ethel Waters

October 31, 1896 – September 1, 1977

Born in Chester, Pennsylvania, and married at the age of 13, Ethel
Waters overcame a childhood of abuse and poverty to become a jazz and
gospel singer and actress, with a career spanning five decades. Waters
toured on the black vaudeville circuit until 1919, when she moved to
Harlem, and began her recording career. In 1929, she recorded “Am I Blue,”
which became a hit, and her signature song. Her film career began the same
year, but she is best known for her Academy Award-nominated role in
Pinky (1949), and for the 1952 film reprisal of her NY Drama Critics Circle
Award-winning performance (1950) in A Member of the Wedding. She was
the second African-American to be nominated for an Academy Award,
and the first African-American woman to be nominated for an Emmy
(1962) for her performance in Route 66. On Jan. 8, 1954, Waters
was interviewed in this house by Edward R. Murrow for his
live television show "Person to Person," which focused on the careers, as well as personal lives, of celebrities.